Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Making Chocolate Chips-or how to cover your kitchen in chocolate

In what I think might be my last kitchen experiment until after we move (it might not be I still have a couple of months after all) I decided to make chocolate chips.  Why, you might ask, would I make chocolate chips?  Well, it's like this.... When we came here I debate bringing chocolate chips, I like them and use them all the time, but, as you may know, chocolate doesn't transport well.  We moved in the summer, we did our consumables shipment in the summer, I didn't want a big lump of chocolate where I used to have chips.  So I've been making due.  When the urge for chocolate chip cookies gets too strong I buy the gourmet chocolate drops that dove makes spending an absurd amount of money for them.  Then this past Thanksgiving, when I was buying my turkey at the fish market (yes you read that right) I bought a GIANT 2kg bar of chocolate thinking "WOW what can I do with this?" Well, as it turns out, this bar of chocolate sat in my freezer for months and finally yesterday I said "I'm making chocolate chips!"  I said this thinking it would only take an hour or so.  But I was WRONG! 
I started off yesterday, with my GIANT bar of chocolate, my screwdriver, and hammer, a bowl to melt the chocolate in, my icing bag, and an aluminum foil covered cookie sheet. And a little help from semi sweetie
The screwdriver and hammer were there to cut the chocolate, I've already broken a knife on a stick of butter, I wasn't about to try one of my knives on the GIANT bar of chocolate. 

The trick is to get the chocolate melted so that it's sludge like.  Not drizzly, but more like slightly runny icing.  The problem is that chocolate only stays at that stage for oh about 30 seconds, before that you've got runny chocolate everywhere, and after that you've got something that is like squishing poop out of a bag (sorry for the graphic nature of that comment, but I've changed diapers, and I have a labrador... this is the best thing I could think of).  I also found that my fancy schmancy Wilton icing bag didn't work at all!  After getting chocolate everywhere and nowhere I finally gave up and snipped a tiny corner off a plastic bag which worked 100 times better.  And while they don't look like Nestle's chips I did manage to get some chocolate onto the cookie sheet into a chip-like shape. 

Having done it, I don't know if I would do it again.  I managed to coat most of the counter, most of myself, most of the fridge/freezer, and most of the microwave in chocolate.  It took forever, although a lot of that was the learning curve... But if you'd like to try it; Melt your chocolate only slightly, like I said you want a slightly runny icing consistency.  Take one spoonful and put it into a bag with a small corner cut off, and squeeze tiny drops of the chocolate onto a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil.  If your chocolate is too runny pop it in the fridge for a little while, too stiff?  Place your plastic bag in a little hot water and let the chocolate soften a little.  Once the chips have hardened pop them off the foil and put them in a plastic bag (this part is the easiest part). 

2 comments:

Spencer said...

Looks delicious! I reckon I could eat the whole tray of them!

Becky said...

I'm glad I am not the only one who made a huge mess trying to make chocolate chips. The idea to only use a tiny bit at a time is really smart. It's such a small window of opportunity. I finally settled for chocolate chunks. But maybe I'll try again sometime and use your ideas for heating up/cooling down the chocolate.